On 20 Aug 2001 12:34:48 +0200, Johan Adolfsson wrote:
> And I think you are wrong, this patch is needed.
> Keep up the good work Robert!
I will -- thank you for the words. :)
> Where would you get the single seed from in an embedded head
> less system if you don't have a hardware random generator,
> no disk and don't seed it from the network interrupts?
exactly. this thread has gone off on a tangent arguing the very merits
of /dev/random itself. obviously if you dislike the kernel's entropy
gatherer, this patch won't sit well either.
the proper argument is, assuming that /dev/random is A Good Thing, is
this patch useful? since its configurable, its not forcing any policy.
since it can be argued pretty strongly that more entropy is needed on a
headless and/or diskless, I think some people need it. personally, it
boosts my self-esteem to have another source of entropy (my 3c905). if
you are worried of the threats net devices have to your entropy, by all
means -- dont enable the config setting.
> I think the patch makes sense - let people have the config option.
hopefully we can get the patch merged, if for nothing else for 2.5.
-- Robert M. Love rml at ufl.edu rml at tech9.net- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 23 2001 - 21:00:36 EST